Recently I set my policy students the task of picking five ways of thinking to structure an ill-defined policy. One of those ways I chose was the ‘picturing’ technique which visualises a problem and it’s relationships. In essence, nobody really picked that option out of 38 students. In a more recent event I asked one of my students to think systemically about a problem. She said she couldn’t do it because it took her out of comfort zone. I had never been confronted with a problem like this before so I was unsure how to handle it. I showed her a basic mapping technique (concept mapping) and she was ok after that. It did get me thinking though… why do people have a hard time visualising concepts?

My argument: people have abandoned pictures in western education

I have watched my eldest daughter draw inventive pictures and create masterpieces only to have that ‘educated’ out of her by the end of grade three. When asked to visualise anything she really struggles now compared with several years ago. Further, the inability of people to apply their imagination to problems, offering new and innovative solutions is somehow linked to the ability to picture things.  During school I felt myself drifting out the window imagining something else while the teacher was talking. I often remember being interrupted by the teacher who would say something like, “Luke stop daydreaming and focus on your work.” Ahh but what great adventures I had staring out that window. I fought crime, solved problems and created new and better realities. Alas, it’s take then best part of 25 years to realise that those methods instilled in me at such an early age have limited my capacity to imagine.

Restoring the capacity to imagine

Reading dulls the mind. Already by now most of you have stopped at this point in the article. Which makes that last sentence somewhat redundant. Let me give you a little test. Imagine you are sitting as a passenger in your car. Can you see the glove box? What about the windscreen? What’s happening as you imagine yourself in this setting? If you can’t do this then you were like me you had lost your capacity to imagine. Here’s a snippet from something I wrote (from this site which I never get time to update) a while ago:

Eunice looked into the small room where her sleeping daughter lay tightly strapped to a bed. Given that she had lost her husband to schizophrenia, she wondered why she hadn’t seen this coming.

Now you are doing it. You are seeing a girl strapped to a bed. You are picturing a mental ward… whatever YOUR perception of that is likely to be. You have seen clothing, pictures on the wall, the room and so on. Why can’t we apply this same thinking to our problems, businesses or other stuff?

My challenge to you

I want you to do something.  I am going to do this too so don’t worry.  Woah man… no it’s not like that.  Take a specific area of your life and begin to apply your imagination to it.  See what you come up with.  Let me finish with the story I began at the start of this post.  The student in question still looked a little puzzled after I used the concept mapping technique so I asked her to use her imagination.  I asked her to think what would it be like IF she could think this way?  How would it feel? What connections would you see?  What steps would you take?  This got her passed the “can’t do it bit” and she actually did a very good job in the end.

The imagination is probably the most underrated part of our brains.  It can take us places our logic can only follow… it can picture for us new realities and if you believe in positive (intentional) spirituality it can even effect reality!  So why not give it a go and let me know how it works out?

I have had my fair share of back stabbings in my short life… more than I would want to count.  Given that I am typing… I can’t count and I too overweight to see my toes.  It has been my experience that the road to hell is not paved with good intentions… it’s paved with people trying to steal my stuff.  People trying to take my job… (get off it’s mine!) and people undermining me at every turn.  People murdering other people and so on and so on. Where is the good intention in that I tell you!  Sure, this saying has merit.  Many a good deed does actually backfire and create hell for the intended.  But most of the time my dear friends you find people are, as the great Nick Cave postulates, just no good.  The good intentions people may have had usually end up in something that has small consequences even though sometimes it does not.

We live in a world where ambition rules over love, good taste is blinded by mass appeal and people like Ghandi are shot in the street.  This world leaves a taste so foul in your mouth at times that you want to surgically remove your tongue so at least it can be clean.  Sure, I am ranting and sure it’s late.  But you know what I find myself shortchanged more often by people who mean me harm as opposed to people who’s heart is in the right place. I could labour this but you know what I think I made my point.

A while ago I was set a task. To drive to the Gold Coast every Thursday and try my hand at teaching a subject about information. Hey why not? The Gold Coast is an interesting place and the people there are quite nice. The interesting thing is that in five years of teaching this subject elsewhere I have found that people really don’t like it. We have tried everything from standing on our head to juggling in class. Many years ago a friend of mine even dressed up like a witch and handed out minties to increase student engagement. Alas, it didn’t work.

It’s easy to teach something people love… try teaching something people hate

I remember five years ago turning up to a class and introducing the major assessment to the class. After one hour of reading on a big screen a student came up to me and asked… what was that about? No, I am not joking. I am being serious. I asked her what she meant and she told me she wasn’t watching for the past hour and wanted me to explain what I had just said… again. During my time this experience stands out but is far too common in my courses.

People hate this course. It’s about ‘information’, informatics, information systems and so on. Boring? Students in the class range from my friend above, to mavens, critics, trouble makers and the occasional paradigm shifter. Overall this has been however, a part of my life that has brought me a lot of growth but a quadruple measure of frustration as well.

How do you hold your head up when the majority of students don’t want to learn… they just want to earn

95% of the people I have taught in any of my courses almost always don’t give a crap about what I have to say. Now, if you are reading this and you were in my course you may be in the 5%. If that’s you then God bless you. If you are reading this and remember me you may have liked me or the course but can’t remember what I said. That’s probably my fault. But what can you do when you are stuck with subjects like knowledge management? For goodness sake, I don’t even know what that is.

Most of the people I meet are on the their way to the sausage factory. By that, I am of course referring to the giant machine that sucks the living creative spirit out from us and makes hamburger patties with it. That machine. The evil corporate beast that brings you the lottery, things like ‘the systems development life cycle’ and so on. Why am I harping on about this? Well … why not?

So how do you cope with students who just want a ‘pass’. Granted I believe a lot of the time in what I teach that it’s A). useful and B) helpful. But I am stuck with this bullcrap idealist mentality I inherited from someone. Can I tell you that most people don’t want to learn about information… even though I want them to? Why should I bother?

When I started teaching I had a concept of what I thought teaching would be like. Sharing ideas, collaboration you know the sort of thing you see on those Lotus advertisements. But who the hell am I kidding? How do you hold your head up? You either forget about being a teacher or you push hard, make them hate you and move on. Neither option is good… there is probably a third when my head pulls itself out of this daze I will remember it.

Amongst the gloom: there have been shining lights?

Of course. I am by nature an optimist. So there have been many people who I helped who were incredibly nice. Overall my assessment is however, that most of time you are simply repeating information for those who ‘want to get through’. Through to what? Through to corporate sausage maker.

A friend of mine put it this way: we are feeding meat to the corporate sausage factory. I think he is right. I have no power to change the way society chooses to run it’s business. You don’t have to run business that way. Read Maverick (Ricardo Semler) if you don’t believe me. Things can be different. Yet, we stick to the Fordian principles of ’scientific’ management which insist we develop ‘plans’ whilst never questioning the underlying motives of our ’superiors’.

The system is not good for people who care

If you are like me and you have a heart you simply can’t switch off when it comes to these things. I have heard it said that you the author is separate to the page. I am sorry but that simply is a load of rubbish. You can be diced up into little bits and fed into the sausage grinder unless you want to be. If you care about your teaching and want to help people learn … it will cost you. There’s a price you must pay if ‘learning’ is the aim of any course. No matter if it’s basket weaving at your local school or quantum mechanics… you will have to pay the price. If you put effort or time or energy into what you do then be prepared for the sausage people. They are part of life.

An optimistic view

I am the kind of academic who believes in knowledge but I don’t REALLY think the endless streams of meta-information we call ‘journals’ are really going to improve society. After realising during my PhD that most knowledge streams never interact I have become more than a little concerned about problems and society. For example when I was reviewing the problem solving research literature I went to all kinds of disciplines. Education, humanities, science, information systems, information technology and social science to name just a few. Do you know what I found? I found the same argument mentioned at least 30 times. Exactly what was that argument?

We need to find better ways to fix messy problems

They all said the same thing but in different contexts. Yet none of them spoke in the same voice. It’s like being in a room with 30 people from different nationalities while they all speak the same sentence in their own language. How can so many different people have the same conversation with themselves? And anyway could you please tell me how any of that is improving society? People can’t because overall it’s about promotions, journal rankings and impact factors. Is that really improving society? Well you might say, ‘I got into Academy of Management Review but if it isn’t working or improving things who actually cares?

I am not saying that I don’t care. That’s precisely the problem I do care. But why? A theory is only as good as it’s validity or usefulness. But I digress.

I would like to end my rant here on a positive note. I have had many wonderful students. Too many to name actually. These people have enlightened my life with their brilliance, challenges and wit. I have met great teachers, fellow thinkers and carers on the path of knowledge who made my life wonderful… for a while. Most of them wind up in trouble with the sausage machine, sacked or moving on. How sad.

So what’s the positive point? There are people who want to learn and grow. These ones are rare but make the journey worthwhile. Yes, it makes up for all the stupid university politics (hat tip to Peter Checkland), the disciplinary meetings and the endless reams of ‘research’. Why because somebody cares and was bothered enough to look beyond the surface level. These people teach me that sausage maker can’t get to everyone, oh no there are some who for the sake of learning have shunned it’s shiny metal surface. So for these I say it’s all worth it!

I was just watching the news as I am getting ready to travel interstate when I heard that rent is going to increase by 50% over the next four years. Holy crap!  Where on earth are we going to get the money to fund that?  As Gordon Ramsey would say, ‘F*** me!’.

Being the internal optimist (hey even my grade criteria is optimistic) I was thinking so what does that mean for me and people like me who are the lower end of the middle class?  The reality is this: either find a way to make more money or kiss the dream goodbye.  It’s no longer just out of my reach… it’s miles out of my reach.  It’s so far out of my reach that I would have to stretch further than plastic man!

You know what I have learned from this whole thing… there is a reason you need faith some times.  The current situation only suits those that have money and can make a fist of it.  Those that have a bit or a little more than a bit are stuffed.  What I want to know is why are we tolerating it?

So to finish my morning rant I have to say this: what’s the answer?  This is, after all, the problem solving blog.  I have heard a great majority of answers but for me only one real answer springs to mind:

I need a miracle.

I have been working steadily on next week’s lecture and thought I might just check if the 30 seconds Simpsons videos I was using in my lectures are still on youtube.  No they are not.  I got a message from the company in question saying for violation of copyright the videos have been shut down.   Last time I checked copyright law this was fair use!

So what have I done instead.  Well thankfully I have found a few De Bono videos and this one from shoemoney about yahoo and if it matters.  The lecture is about policy and strategic assumptions - the satire of The Simpsons is picture perfect.  Shoemoney is good too and a good replacement but C’MON why did you have to take those videos off the frickin’ internet!  It made my otherwise BORING lectures somewhat interesting.  I am really mad!  Now I can’t entertain myself while I lecture anymore thanks to the overfed legal beast that sucks on the teats of the Fox Corporation.  I hope whoever thought it was a GOOD idea to take the videos off the internet remembers the little guy (me) next time they pull them off the web.

I will leave you with some thoughts on piracy:

I wish all of my blog subscribers a happy easter!  Whatever you are doing for the break (if you live in a country where you get one that is) I hope it’s peaceful, fun and not work.

God bless you all.

Luke.

I work in a university teaching people about computers (mainly) and policy.  The stuff dreams are made of.  Every semester there is always one student that irks me more than most and the kind that just wants the answers.  Their version of life is to simply have the “facts” and that is that.  Well I can tell you that if you really want to learn about life there is a world outside the facts you need to consider.

Having the answer… isn’t the same as the answer itself.

My way of learning is not to just get the answers… it’s to work out how I can get to the answer. Say, for instance, you are into affiliate marketing. The information you need is not how do I get sales BUT how do I actually become a competent affiliate marketer. What’s the difference? The process of selling and learning how to market things will teach you how to get sales. If I tell you this is how I get sales there will be important information missing. Stuff like, what is your budget, demographic, what is the marketing environment and so on. If I just told you what to do without giving you the chance to learn… you would not remember a bloody thing.

You must learn the way and then innovate it as you go along… not collect facts

Nothing gets under my skins faster than students who couldn’t be bothered to learn the skills I teach. I mean it’s really easy to show you the answer but the way there is lost on someone like that. That’s not teaching it’s programming robots. I am not into AI so I am dealing with humans. To rephrase a popular saying, “I can give you the fish or I can teach you how to catch them yourself.” If you are smart you will go through some pain to get there and build something with it. If not, you will be amongst the growing ant population that populate the cubes of the EVIL corporate beast. But I digress…

If this is you… don’t be an ass. Decide to begin learning the way by trying. I know your parents probably bailed you out up to this point or you are as lazy as I used to be. Don’t be like that! Once you know something you have power and you can use this power to dominate the world destroy the UN go back in time better yourself. If you don’t then you will be a GRADE A moron in my books.

* Note: the previous blog post may not resemble coherent thought.